Review
?When people ask me what has happened in my long lifetime I do not refer them to the newspaper files and to the authorities, but to [Sinclair?s] novels.? ?George Bernard Shaw


Book Description
Upton Sinclair?s The Jungle not only drew attention from the likes of Winston Churchill and President Theodore Roosevelt—it drew action. The novel?s depiction of what takes place in a meat-processing plant pressed the U.S. government into taking steps to regulate the industry. Examine the work with this text. The title, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, part of Chelsea House Publishers’ Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics. This collection of criticism also features a short biography on Upton Sinclair, a chronology of the author’s life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University.


Card catalog description
Describes the characteristics and location of different types of jungles and the people, plants, and animals that inhabit them.


From the Publisher
During his lifetime, Upton Sinclair authored dozens of books dealing with political and social questions, The Coal War and Oil! being two representative examples. Sinclair was also a socialist and political activist almost his entire adult life. After being massively outspent by business interests he narrowly missed being elected governor of California in 1936. The Jungle, written while he was still in his 20s, is by far his best known book.

FROM OUR EDITORS

This muckraking novel changed the course of history with its gruesomely detailed picture of the meat-packing industry. Historically accurate & humanistic, the book remains an invaluable mirror by which we may still examine ourselves & society today.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

For nearly a century the original edition of Upton Sinclair's classic expose novel, The Jungle, has remained almost entirely unknown. When it was published in 1905, it was a full third longer than the censored commercial edition published the following year. That expurgated commercial edition edited out much of the ethnic flavor of the original, as well as some of the goriest descriptions of the meat packing industry and Sinclair's most pointed social and political commentary. Now, finally, the full text of the original edition of Upton Sinclair's masterpiece is available for the first time in paperback. Except for correction of a few obvious typographical errors, the text of this new See Sharp Press edition is exactly as it appeared in the uncensored, original edition in 1905. In addition to the text, this new edition contains a foreword by Earl Lee concerning the discovery and subsequent suppression of the original edition, and an introduction by Kathleen DeGrave placing the novel in historical context and explaining the pattern of censorship in the commonly known commercial edition, and its consequent major differences from the original edition.

During his lifetime, Upton Sinclair authored dozens of books dealing with political and social questions, The Coal War and Oil! being two representative examples. Sinclair was also a socialist and political activist almost his entire adult life. After being massively outspent by business interests he narrowly missed being elected governor of California in 1936. The Jungle, written while he was still in his 20s, is by far his best known book.

FROM THE CRITICS

New York Times Book Review

Mr. Sinclair in The Jungle has given the world a close, a striking, and, we may say, in many ways a brilliant study of the great industries of Chicago. . . . The language Mr. Sinclair employs is appropriate to the scene, the action, and the characters of his drama. . . . The experienced reader will at once perceive that Mr. Sinclair has taken Zola for his model. The likeness is more than striking -- it fairly forces itself upon the attention of the reader. . . .He has not written a second Uncle Tom's Cabin. -- New York Times review, March 1906; Books of the Century

AudioFile - Paul B. Janeczko